524 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Junx, 1900. 
and 1896, in which years the imports were valued at £1,203,200 and £1,125,400, 
and the exports at £833,000 and £799,400 respectively. The quantities 
arriving and despatched were, however, somewhat greater in 1897, so that the 
intrinsic value of the eggs was considered to be somewhat higher in the later 
year. 
ARTESIAN IRRIGATION. 
Ir is not generally known that more than 16,000 acres of cultivated land and 
native grass lands were irrigated in Queensland from artesian bores and tanks 
during the year 1899, 
The Hydraulic Engineer, in his fifteenth annual report, gives the areas 
under different crops so irrigated as follow :— 
Sugar-cane and tropical products, 6,839 acres; fruit (including bananas) 
and vegetables, 573 acres; maize, lucerne, and cereals, 415 acres ; potatoes and 
kitchen produce, 106 acres; grasses, 8,096 acres. 
There is a marked increase of the area irrigated under fruit, potatoes, and 
vegetables, while the area of irrigated land under maize, lucerne, and cereals 18 
less. The area irrigated from artesian bores has continued on the increase. 
Besides the areas above given, many stations, not mentioned in the returns, use 
bore water for irrigation purposes on a small scale, but of these plots no 
estimate has been formed. 
FARMING AT DAKOTA, U.S.A. 
Ir may interest some of our readers to learn how wheat is raised on some of 
the large farmsin Dakota. Harm and Dairy publishes the following account of 
how the work is done on Mr. N. G. Larimore’s famous South Dakota wheat 
farm of 10,000 acres :— 
For ploughing, mule teams of five are used, driven by one man, hitched to 
a gang-plough which he rides, and which consists of two separate ploughs 
turning a furrow 14 inches wide, or two of 28 inches, ata time. In breaking 
up new land this furrow is only 24 to 3 inches deep, to cut up the grass roots, 
which is done in June, and left to rot till July or August, when it is back-set 
or ploughed 3 inches deeper, then harrowed in the autumn, when it is ready 
for spring seeding. The second year’s Pee is done by the same number 
of mules and deep enough at one ploughing to fit it for horrowing and seeding. 
One of these gang-ploughs and teams plough up 6 to 7 acres a day. The field 
is 6 miles long, and a team makes one round trip, or 12 miles in half a day, oF 
24 miles a day. The farm employs 40 of these gang-ploughs and 200 mules to 
run them, and 40 men. Every five years they summer-fallow their ground, 
ploughing it after seeding time 8 inches deep, harrow it later for the weeds, 
then plough it again in the fall and harrow ready for seeding in the spring, thus 
resting the ground in lieu of fértilising. Yet some seed it right along and even 
put the land in flax seven years running without affecting the crop, though it was 
supposed to be a most exhausting crop. Flax is generally sown for the first 
crop after breaking up the prairie, as it can be seeded the same year, while for 
wheat it must lie one year for the grass roots to rot before seeding. The 
Larimore farm has 65 self-reapers and binders, each run by three mules and one 
driver, which cut and bind 18 to 20 acres of wheat per day. The country 18 & 
flat and treeless except along the streams, but a plentiful supply of cold pure 
water is found 10 to 15 feet below the surface, with neither stones nor roots t0 
interfere with cultivation. They raise barley as well as wheat and flax, and 
use it in place of corn-maize for feed, and pigs fed upon it bring 7d. per Me 
more than corn-fed, as the meat is sweeter. Pigs are now a regular product 0 
wheat farms as a consequence. An interesting computation of the number ire 
miles of furrow made in one day by the 40 gang-ploughs, as above, shows tha 
ae gang ploughs 48 miles of single furrow, and the 40 gangs 1,920 miles 
ily. 
